May 20, 2003

Power Source

Because of the 9/11 atrocities, we have no doubt that the Bush Administration, U.S. military forces and U.S. intelligence agencies are earnestly doing everything they can to capture or kill every individual Al Qaeda member they can find. And they've had many admirable successes (one of which we noted in this entry about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed).

But at some point, this could be like trying to kill a fast-growing poison ivy plant one leaf at a time without attacking its roots. The "power source" of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is the states that sponsor them, which was the spot-on point of the Bush Doctrine. Yet Iran, the world's primary sponsor of Islamic terrorism, has to date only been given harsh words. And Saudi Arabia still appears to be getting the kid glove treatment.

A new editorial from The Ayn Rand Institute -- The Road to Victory Goes Through Tehran by Robert W. Tracinski -- offers this advice: "America needs to recognize that this war is inherently a conflict between two opposing value systems. Our enemies are driven by the theocratic philosophy shared, despite minor sectarian differences, by Osama bin Laden and by the mullahs who rule Iran. The destruction of the Iranian theocracy would do more than just eliminate the world's largest supporter of terrorism; it would do more than end a nuclear-weapons program that is far closer to completion than Iraq's ever was; it would do more than stop the Iranian-staged Shiite agitation in Iraq. The end of the Iranian regime would destroy the Middle East's laboratory of theocracy -- the leading example and exporter of a system of religious dogma enforced by terror."